For the last seven weeks, I’ve been away from home, helping
to take care of my best friend and her family during the end of her life. I had
no idea how hard it would be, but we did well by her and her passing was
peaceful, attended by great tenderness and forgiveness. I stayed on for another
ten days to organize the memorial and transition for her family.

During this entire time, one of my personal anchors was
writing. I loaded up my netbook with current projects and took the folders with
checklists for various Book View Café projects I was working on. In this way, I
created a portable office, albeit one that lacked all the resources I had at
home. For example, although I had access to the internet through my carrier’s
website, I didn’t have my address book files. I learned to “work around” these
limitations, focusing instead on what I could do, delegating and asking for
help with things I couldn’t, and postponing other tasks. As a result, I was
productive with some projects but “on hold” in others.

Now I’m back in my own office, resources at hand. I’m facing
a dual challenge: coming “up to speed” and getting back into balance. What do I
mean by balance? I mean reapportioning (or rather, un-deapportioning) my time
and focus. Rarely have I been so aware of the many activities involved in my
life as a writer. These include, to name a few, original fiction writing
(drafting, revision, revision-to-editorial-request), other aspects of book
production (proofreading); editing anthologies; beta-reading and editing books,
often for other Book View Café members; writing blog posts like this one;
keeping up with professional communications (reading and responding to email
from fellow writers, fans, and editors, not to mention news of the publishing
world).

Friday, October 18, 2013

I was awed and inspired by how fully my friend lived the almost-five years between her diagnosis with Stage 4 ovarian cancer and her death last week. I am reminded that a terminal diagnosis does not mean we stop living -- it is an invitation to make every moment count, and thereby enrich not only the life of the patient but those around her. Here is author and lung cancer patient Janet Freeman-Daily on her own experience of hope, illness, and the zest of being alive.

I’m grateful to be here. Actually, I’m grateful to be anywhere. I’m grateful to be alive. The fact that I’m alive is a modern-day medical miracle.

In May of 2011, after a few months of a persistent cough, I was
diagnosed with pneumonia caused by advanced lung cancer. No, I never
smoked anything except a salmon. Five months after diagnosis, despite
chemo and radiation, the cancer spread outside my chest and I was given
at most two years to live. A year later, after more treatment and
another recurrence, I learned my cancer had a rare mutation. Last
October, I found a clinical trial that could treat that mutation with an
experimental pill, and I flew to Denver to get it. In January, I
achieved the dream of all metastatic cancer patients: No Evidence of
Disease. My cancer is no longer detectable.

I am overwhelmingly grateful for everything and everyone that has
brought me to this state of grace: medical science that discovered new
ways to treat my condition, insurance that paid for most of my care,
family and friends who supported me, a knowledgeable online lung cancer
community, and all the prayers and good wishes lifting me up throughout
my cancer journey. Thank you. I am truly blessed.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

From the age of steam and the heirs of Dr. Frankenstein to the asteroid
belt to the halls of Miskatonic University, the writers at Book View
Café have concocted a beakerful of quaint, dangerous, sexy, clueless,
genius, insane scientists, their assistants (sometimes equally if not
even more deranged, not to mention bizarre), friends, test subjects, and
adversaries.

Table of Contents:
The Jacobean Time Machine, by Chris Dolley
Comparison of Efficacy Rates, by Marie Brennan
A Princess of Wittgenstein, by Jennifer Stevenson
Mandelbrot Moldrot, by Lois Gresh
Dog Star, by Jeffrey A. Carver
Secundus, by Brenda W. Clough
Willie, by Madeleine E. Robins
One Night in O’Shaughnessy’s Bar, by David D. Levine
Revision, by Nancy Jane Moore
Night Without Darkness, by Shannon Page & Mark J. Ferrari
The Stink of Reality, by Irene Radford
“Value For O,” by Jennifer Stevenson
The Peculiar Case of Sir Willoughby Smythe, by Judith Tarr
The Gods That Men Don’t See, by Amy Sterling Casil

You can download a sample from the BVC bookstore, too. This anthology includes both original and reprint stories and is available as mobi and epub formats, so you can download the version that's right for your ereader. Best of all, because BVC is an author's publishing cooperative, 95% of the price goes to the authors themselves.

Monday, October 14, 2013

When did you become interested in editing other writers’ work as opposed to concentrating on writing?
I first started thinking about editing during the years when I’d
visit Marion Zimmer Bradley on a regular basis. I helped read slush for
her magazine (MZB’s Fantasy Magazine) and
we’d talk. I got a “behind the scenes” look at what she looked for and
why, and how she handled rejection letters. She taught me that the work
of an editor isn’t mysterious, in part because her own tastes were so
definite. A story could be perfectly good but not suit the anthology or
magazine she was reading for, or might do both but not “catch fire” for
her. I learned about “no fault” rejections (and I’ve received them
myself, for example if the editor had just bought a story on the same
theme by a Big Name Author) and that sometimes if an editor thought the
story had merit but didn’t fulfill its promise, she could comment on its
shortcomings or issue an invitation to re-submit after revision. I
thought, “I can do this!” I’d had so many experiences from the Author
side of the desk, I approached editing with a set of wild hopes and
convictions.

Friday, October 11, 2013

Because I'll be busy helping with my friend's memorial and other family issues, I'm reposting something from a couple of years ago. Yes, Bonnie is the friend I mention.

Twenty-five years ago, my mother was raped and beaten to death by a
teenaged neighbor on drugs. My mother was 70 years old and had been his
friend since the time he was a small child. For a long time, I didn't
talk much about it except in private situations. This was not to keep it
a secret, but to compartmentalize my life so I could function. At
first, it was too difficult and then, as the years passed, I refused to
let this single incident be the defining experience of my life.
Recently, however, I have felt inspired to use my own experience of
survival and healing to speak out against the death penalty. I don't
write this to convince you one way or another on that particular issue,
but to try to illuminate how the two issues are related for me.

My
mother's murder was a spectacularly brutal, headline-banner crime, but
it was only part of a larger tragedy, for the perpetrator's family had
suffered the murder of his older brother some years before. I knew this,
but for a long time it didn't matter. My own pain and rage took center
stage. But with time and much hard work in recovery, I came to the place
of being able to listen to the stories of other people.

We
all lose people we love. Tolstoy wrote that happy families are all
alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. I would
interpret that to mean that each loss, each set of relationships and
circumstances is unique, but there are things we share.

What
might it be like if one family member were murdered -- and another
family member had killed someone? What does it feel like to watch the
weeks and days pass while the execution of someone you dearly love draws
ever nearer? How can we wrap our minds around loving someone and
accepting that they have caused such anguish to another family? I've had
a chance to talk with people in all these circumstances. It's been a
humbling experience.

Monday, October 7, 2013

When I packed to travel out of state to help care for my
best friend and her family during her final weeks of life, I had no idea how
long I would be away. The ereader my daughter had passed on to me provided the
ideal solution of how to carry a variety of books with me. I read at night as
part of my bedtime ritual and I couldn’t anticipate what I would need at the
end of each day. Horror, which has never previously appealed to me, might resonate
with the depth of the grief of this entire household as we let go of hope and
say goodbye. Maybe not, but should I bring some just in case? What about my
favorite and unabashedly unguilty pleasures – fantasy and science fiction?
Something to challenge my mind and make me think? A genre I don’t usually read?
Mystery? Nonfiction?

I loaded up my ereader with a stack of books from Book View Café,
picking a few from authors I’ve loved and choosing others practically at
random. Here’s what I’ve been reading and why.

I started with three pieces – two novellas and a novel -- by
Marie Brennan. I’d never read her work before she joined Book View Café, so
when I found Midnight Never Come in a
bookstore (and it looked interesting), I grabbed it. It’s the first of a series
called “The Onyx Court,” set London during the reign of Elizabeth I. My husband and
I had gone through a phase of watching every film biography of Elizabeth I that
we could find, so that was an automatic plus. Brennan created a second, faerie
court, hidden belowground but interacting in secret ways for England’s benefit.
Fits right in with Sir Francis Walsingham and Dr. John Dee, and other
historical characters. I enjoyed the book immensely, so the first thing I read
was more Brennan, a novella set in the same world although slightly later in time.
Deeds of Men is a murder mystery,
with characteristic Brennan twists. I was glad I’d already read Midnight Never Come because I was
already in love with the main character, but this would also make a good
introduction to the series. I also picked the two “Welton” pieces, a prequel
novella called Welcome To Welton and
then the novel Lies and Prophecy.
Both reminded me a little of Pamela Dean’s excellent Tam Lin, only set at Hogwarts if Hogwarts was a college and magic
was public and widely spread. What kind of curriculum would a college offer?
Dorms, room mates, cafeteria food, professors, meddling parents, the whole
shebang. But Brennan doesn’t leave the story there; it turns out that the
reason people have magical abilities is that they’re descended from fae who
mingled with humans during a time when Faerie was closer to Earth. And now the
two worlds are drawing closer again, and the Seelie and UnSeelie Courts are in deadly
competition for who gets to rule, whether to enslave or ally with humans. And
our college kids are caught up in it all. Brennan’s easy prose and likeable characters
drew me into her world, a lovely escape at the end of each day.

Saturday, October 5, 2013

At last we've had some sun, after days of storm and gloomy overcast. Hospice sent a lovely volunteer to sit with my friend﻿, so I took a break and spent the afternoon talking shop and getting my creative batteries "recharged" with a nearby fellow writer. I'm reminded how friends create a network as resilient as any spun by a spider. Friendships work because we're not all crazy -- or needy, or sick -- on the same day. Our love for one another is like water flowing through many channels, all one thing but divided, some sleepy winding rivers or placid waves on the beach, others torrential downpours or waterfalls, or glaciers. Or tsunamis.

Friday, October 4, 2013

There is nothing an author today has to guard himself
more carefully against than the Saga Habit.The least slackening of vigilance and the thing has gripped him.

-- P.G.
Wodehouse, writing in 1935

How little
things change!I too am a victim of the
Saga Habit.Fifteen Deverry books, four
Nola O’Gradys -- and I haven’t even finished the Nola series!Now SORCERER’S LUCK, which I a “Runemaster trilogy”.Over the years, a number of people have asked
me why I tend to write at this great length.I’ve put some thought into the answer, and it can be boiled down one
word: consequences.Well, maybe two
words: consequences and characters.Or
perhaps, consequences, characters, and the subconscious mind, above all the
subconscious mind.You see what I
mean?These things multiply by
themselves.

meant to be a
stand-alone, is insisting that it’s only the first volume of

Not all
series books are sagas.Some are shaped
more like beads on a string, separate episodes held together by a set of
characters, who may or may not grow and change as the series continues.Many mystery novels fall into the episode
category, Sherlock Holmes, for example, or James Bond.Other series start out as episodics, but saga
creeps up on them as minor characters bring depth to a plot and demand stories
of their own, for instance, in Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan series
or Ian Rankin’s detective novels.What
determines the difference in these examples comes back to the idea of
consequences.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Here's the cover for Shannivar, the second book of The Seven-Petaled Shield. I am so pleased with the artwork by Matt Stawicki! It's available for pre-order at the usual places, for an early December release.

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

After a brief hiatus, I've returned to the Great Traveling Fantasy Round Table. This month's topic, hosted by Warren Rochelle, is "Evil and the Fantastic." My entry is below, but please go read the others. And write your own!

***

I don’t think it’s possible to discuss evil without talking
about the literature of the fantastic. We hear people talk about “evil
incarnate,” usually in reference to some person or institution that has committed
particularly heinous acts, as if evil were a tangible, measurable thing that
exists outside the human imagination. In real life, things are rarely that
simplistic.

Certainly, history and even some current religious thought puts
forth the notion of those, human or not, who are inherently evil. To this day,
some people believe that snakes (or spiders or other animals) are evil (I
encountered one such man in a pet store, warning his young son that the garter
snake would steal his soul if he weren’t careful). Once the mentally ill (or
physically ill, such as those who suffer from epilepsy) were thought to be
possessed by demons. Such beliefs persist today on the fringes of mainstream
Western society, although they have largely been expunged from medical and
psychiatric practice. We believe that such conditions as schizophrenia and
sociopathy arise from disorders of neurophysiology, even if we cannot yet
pinpoint the precise etiology. Even when we do know exactly what
neurotransmitters and part of the brain are involved, it is still a widespread
and understandable human tendency to ascribe unexplained phenomena, whether
beneficial or destructive, to supernatural agency. Even though intellectually
we may understand that a mass murderer is not an incarnation of some demonic
spirit, nor is he possessed by one, and even if we cannot explain why such a
person is utterly lacking in empathy for other human beings, we still often use
words like evil, wicked, damned,
devilish, satanic, and demonic.

Humans are capable of cruelty and viciousness so extreme in
degree or scope that few of us can comprehend it, let alone the motivation
behind it. How can we make sense of atrocities like the Holocaust or its
equivalents, historical or modern? Of the massacres in Africa, Central Europe,
the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, to name but a few?

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